Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

by Brian Aldiss

Aldiss, in a January 1997 interview with Wired Magazine, says that
in the early 90's he Stanley Kubrick made two collaborative attempts
to turn his story "Supertoys..." into a script. "I can't tell you how
many directions we went. My favorite was when David and Teddy got
exiled to Tin City, a place where the old model robots, like old
cars, were living out their days. Stanley definitely had the ambition
to make another big science fiction movie, but in the end, we didn't
get anywhere. Stanley called in Arthur Clarke and asked him to
provide a scenario, but he didn't like that, either....

"I have a feeling, having worked with him, that he hasn't got
the dashing confidence of youth," says Aldiss. "But of course, with
age, you acquire a different sort of confidence." The director's
creative vision, meanwhile, is clearer than ever. "Stanley embraces
android technology," Aldiss notes, "and thinks it might eventually
take over -- and be an improvement over the human race."

The original drafts made by Aldiss and Kubrick became the
starting point for his as-yet unfinished project A.I.
Following the departure of Aldiss, Kubrick subsequently worked with
authors Ian Watson and Bob Shaw. The film is currently under
pre-production in London; few further details are currently
known.

InMrs. Swinton's garden,
it was always summer. The lovely almond trees stood about it
in perpetual leaf. Monica Swinton plucked a saffron-colored rose and
showed it to David.

"Isn't it lovely?" she said.

David looked up at her and grinned without replying. Seizing the
flower, he ran with it across the lawn and disappeared behind the
kennel where the mowervator crouched, ready to cut or sweep or roll
when the moment dictated. She stood alone on her impeccable plastic
gravel path.

She had tried to love him.

When she made up her mind to follow the boy, she found him in the
courtyard floating the rose in his paddling pool. He stood in the
pool engrossed, still wearing his sandals.

"David, darling, do you have to be so awful? Come in at once and
change your shoes and socks."

He went with her without protest into the house, his dark head
bobbing at the level of her waist. At the age of three, he showed no
fear of the ultrasonic dryer in the kitchen. But before his mother
could reach for a pair of slippers, he wriggled away and was gone
into the silence of the house.

He would probably be looking for Teddy.

Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye,
went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She
began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited
on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the
insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world. Almost
by reflex, she reached out and changed the wavelength of her windows.
The garden faded; in its place, the city center rose by her left
hand, full of crowding people, blowboats, and buildings (but she kept
the sound down). She remained alone. An overcrowded world is the
ideal place in which to be lonely.

*

The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to
celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the
plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender,
despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives
were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were
putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have
regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.

Henry Swinton, Managing Director of Synthank, was about to make a
speech.

"I'm sorry your wife couldn't be with us to hear you," his
neighbor said.

"Monica prefers to stay at home thinking beautiful thoughts," said
Swinton, maintaining a smile.

"One would expect such a beautiful woman to have beautiful
thoughts," said the neighbor.

Take your mind off my wife, you bastard, thought Swinton, still
smiling.

He rose to make his speech amid applause.

After a couple of jokes, he said, "Today marks a real breakthrough
for the company. It is now almost ten years since we put our first
synthetic life-forms on the world market. You all know what a success
they have been, particularly the miniature dinosaurs. But none of
them had intelligence.

"It seems like a paradox that in this day and age we can create
life but not intelligence. Our first selling line, the Crosswell
Tape, sells best of all, and is the most stupid of all." Everyone
laughed.

"Though three-quarters of the overcrowded world are starving, we
are lucky here to have more than enough, thanks to population
control. Obesity's our problem, not malnutrition. I guess there's
nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell working for him
in the small intestine, a perfectly safe parasite tape-worm that
enables its host to eat up to fifty percent more food and still keep
his or her figure. Right?" General nods of agreement.

"Not only does he have intelligence, he has a controlled amount of
intelligence. We believe people would be afraid of a being with a
human brain. Our serving-man has a small computer in his cranium.

"There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers for
brains -- plastic things without life, super-toys -- but we have at
last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh."

*

David sat by the long window of his nursery, wrestling with paper
and pencil. Finally, he stopped writing and began to roll the pencil
up and down the slope of the desk-lid.

"Teddy!" he said.

Teddy lay on the bed against the wall, under a book with moving
pictures and a giant plastic soldier. The speech-pattern of his
master's voice activated him and he sat up.

"Teddy, I can't think what to say!"

Climbing off the bed, the bear walked stiffly over to cling to the
boy's leg. David lifted him and set him on the desk.

"What have you said so far?"

"I've said --" He picked up his letter and stared hard at it.
"I've said, 'Dear Mummy, I hope you're well just now. I love
you....'"

There was a long silence, until the bear said, "That sounds fine.
Go downstairs and give it to her."

Another long silence.

"It isn't quite right. She won't understand."

Inside the bear, a small computer worked through its program of
possibilities. "Why not do it again in crayon?"

When David did not answer, the bear repeated his suggestion. "Why
not do it again in crayon?"

David was staring out of the window. "Teddy, you know what I was
thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren't real
things?"

The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good."

"I wonder if time is good. I don't think Mummy likes time very
much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by
her. Is time real, Teddy?"

"Clocks tell the time. Clocks are real. Mummy has clocks so she
must like them. She has a clock on her wrist next to her dial."

David started to draw a jumbo jet on the back of his letter. "You
and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?"

The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are
real David." It specialized in comfort.

*

Monica walked slowly about the house. It was almost time for the
afternoon post to come over the wire. She punched the Post Office
number on the dial on her wrist, but nothing came through. A few
minutes more.

She could take up her painting. Or she could dial her friends. Or
she could wait till Henry came home. Or she could go up and play with
David....

She walked out into the hall and to the bottom of the stairs.

"David!"

No answer. She called again and a third time.

"Teddy!" she called, in sharper tones.

"Yes, Mummy!" After a moment's pause, Teddy's head of golden fur
appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Is David in his room,Teddy?"

"David went into the garden, Mummy."

"Come down here, Teddy!"

She stood impassively, watching the little furry figure as it
climbed down from step to step on its stubby limbs. When it reached
the bottom, she picked it up and carried it into the living room. It
lay unmoving in her arms, staring up at her. She could feel just the
slightest vibration from its motor.

"Stand there, Teddy. I want to talk to you." She set him down on a
tabletop, and he stood as she requested, arms set forward and open in
the eternal gesture of embrace.

"Teddy, did David tell you to tell me he had gone into the
garden?"

The circuits of the bear's brain were too simple for artifice.
"Yes, Mummy."

"So you lied to me."

"Yes. Mummy."

"Stop calling me Mummy! Why is David avoiding me? He's not afraid
of me, is he?"

"No. He loves you."

"Why can't we communicate?"

"David's upstairs."

The answer stopped her dead. Why waste time talking to this
machine? Why not simply go upstairs and scoop David into her arms and
talk to him, as a loving mother should to a loving son? She heard the
sheer weight of silence in the house, with a different quality of
silence pouring out of every room. On the upper landing, something
was moving very silently -- David, trying to hide away from her....

*

He was nearing the end of his speech now. The guests were
attentive; so was the Press, lining two walls of the banqueting
chamber, recording Henry's words and occasionally photographing him.

"Our serving-man will be, in many senses, a product of the
computer. Without computers, we could never have worked through the
sophisticated biochemics that go into synthetic flesh. The
serving-man will also be an extension of the computer--for he will
contain a computer in his own head, a microminiaturized computer
capable of dealing with almost any situation he may encounter in the
home. With reservations, of course." Laughter at this; many of those
present knew the heated debate that had engulfed the Synthank
boardroom before the decision had finally been taken to leave the
serving-man neuter under his flawless uniform.

"Amid all the triumphs of our civilization -- yes, and amid the
crushing problems of overpopulation too -- it is sad to reflect how
many millions of people suffer from increasing loneliness and
isolation. Our serving-man will be a boon to them: he will always
answer, and the most vapid conversation cannot bore him.

"For the future, we plan more models, male and female--some of
them without the limitations of this first one, I promise you! -- of
more advanced design, true bio-electronic beings.

"Not only will they possess their own computer, capable of
individual programming; they will be linked to the World Data
Network. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy the equivalent of an
Einstein in their own homes. Personal isolation will then be banished
forever!"

He sat down to enthusiastic applause. Even the synthetic
serving-man, sitting at the table dressed in an unostentatious suit,
applauded with gusto.

*

Dragging his satchel, David crept round the side of the house. He
climbed on to the ornamental seat under the living-room window and
peeped cautiously in.

His mother stood in the middle of the room. Her face was blank,
its lack of expression scared him. He watched fascinated. He did not
move; she did not move. Time might have stopped, as it had stopped in
the garden.

At last she turned and left the room. After waiting a moment,
David tapped on the window. Teddy looked round, saw him, tumbled off
the table, and came over to the window. Fumbling with his paws, he
eventually got it open.

They looked at each other.

"I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away!"

"You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you."

Slowly, he shook his head. "If she loved me, then why can't I talk
to her?"

"You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had
you."

"She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely."

Teddy gave him a friendly cuff over the head. "If you feel so bad,
you'd better go to the psychiatrist again."

"I hate that old psychiatrist -- he makes me feel I'm not real."
He started to run across the lawn. The bear toppled out of the window
and followed as fast as its stubby legs would allow.

Monica Swinton was up in the nursery. She called to her son once
and then stood there, undecided. All was silent.

Crayons lay on his desk. Obeying a sudden impulse, she went over
to the desk and opened it. Dozens of pieces of paper lay inside. Many
of them were written in crayon in David's clumsy writing, with each
letter picked out in a color different from the letter preceding it.
None of the messages was finished.

"Darling Mummy, I'm your one and only son and I love you so much
that some times --"

"Dear Mummy, you're really my Mummy and I hate Teddy --"

"Darling Mummy, guess how much I love --"

"Dear Mummy, I'm your little boy not Teddy and I love you but
Teddy --"

"Dear Mummy, this is a letter to you just to say how much how ever
so much --"

Monica dropped the pieces of paper and burst out crying. In their
gay inaccurate colors, the letters fanned out and settled on the
floor.

*

Henry Swinton caught the express home in high spirits, and
occasionally said a word to the synthetic serving-man he was taking
home with him. The serving-man answered politely and punctually,
although his answers were not always entirely relevant by human
standards.

The Swintons lived in one of the ritziest city-blocks, half a
kilometer above the ground. Embedded in other apartments, their
apartment had no windows to the outside; nobody wanted to see the
overcrowded external world. Henry unlocked the door with his retina
pattern-scanner and walked in, followed by the serving-man.

At once, Henry was surrounded by the friendly illusion of gardens
set in eternal summer. It was amazing what Whologram could do to
create huge mirages in small spaces. Behind its roses and wisteria
stood their house; the deception was complete: a Georgian mansion
appeared to welcome him.

"How do you like it?" he asked the serving-man.

"Roses occasionally suffer from black spot."

"These roses are guaranteed free from any imperfections."

"It is always advisable to purchase goods with guarantees, even if
they cost slightly more."

"Thanks for the information," Henry said dryly. Synthetic
lifeforms were less than ten years old, the old android mechanicals
less than sixteen; the faults of their systems were still being
ironed out, year by year.

He opened the door and called to Monica.

She came out of the sitting-room immediately and flung her arms
round him, kissing him ardently on cheek and lips. Henry was amazed.

Pulling back to look at her face, he saw how she seemed to
generate light and beauty. It was months since he had seen her so
excited. Instinctively, he clasped her tighter.

He caught a glimpse of the heading on the photostat in her hand,
still moist from the wall-receiver: Ministry of Population. He felt
the color drain from his face in sudden shock and hope.

"Monica ... oh ... Don't tell me our number's come up!"

"Yes, my darling, yes, we've won this week's parenthood lottery!
We can go ahead and conceive a child at once!"

He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of
population was such that reproduction had to be strict, controlled.
Childbirth required government permission. For this moment, they had
waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.

They paused at last, gasping and stood in the middle of the room
to laugh at each other's happiness. When she had come down from the
nursery, Monica had de-opaqued the windows so that they now revealed
the vista of garden beyond. Artificial sunlight was growing long and
golden across the lawn -- and David and Teddy were staring through
the window at them.

Seeing their faces, Henry and his wife grew serious.

"What do we do about them?" Henry asked.

"Teddy's no trouble. He works well."

"Is David malfunctioning?"

"His verbal communication center is still giving trouble. I think
he'll have to go back to the factory again."

"Okay. We'll see how he does before the baby's born. Which reminds
me--I have a surprise for you: help just when help is needed! Come
into the hall and see what I've got."

As the two adults disappeared from the room, boy and bear sat down
beneath the standard roses.

"First I'm going to have another rose!" Plucking a bright pink
flower, he carried it with him into the house. It could lie on the
pillow as he went to sleep. Its beauty and softness reminded him of
Mummy.